By FRANK A. AUKOFER
Scripps Howard News Service An old songbook standard could have provided a road map for Infiniti, the luxury division of Japan's Nissan.
One verse goes like this:
Don't lose your confidence if you slip,
Be grateful for a pleasant trip,
And pick yourself up,
Dust yourself off,
Start all over again.
When Infiniti started in 1990, it was widely expected to be the counterweight to Lexus, then the brand-new luxury division of Toyota. But it faltered and became an also-ran.
As in the song, however, it never lost its confidence. Over the years, it adjusted, dusted off and reinvented itself. The original flagship sedan, the Q45, intended as the sport-luxury alternative to the Lexus LS, struggled and finally succumbed after 17 years.
Meanwhile, Infiniti gradually developed what now has morphed into a decent, relatively comprehensive lineup of luxury and near-luxury cars, crossovers and one SUV. The flagship sedan now is the M, but the bread-and-butter best seller is the sport-oriented G, which now has been fleshed out with the all-new G37 convertible.
Actually, it would be more accurate to say it has been steeled out because the new car has a three-piece hard top that disappears completely into the trunk.
With the top up, the G37 has the cozy ambiance of its garage-mates, the G37 coupe and sedan. Top down, it has all the wind-in-the-hair appeal of a luxury convertible, although you can mitigate even that with an optional wind blocker that fits over the back seat..
There are only a few hard top convertibles that can carry four people-cramped to be sure-and fewer still in the G37's class. They include the Volkswagen Eos, Volvo C70, BMW 3, Chrysler Sebring, and Lexus IS.
The expense and complexity keeps the numbers down, and most of the hard top convertibles severely restrict trunk space. An exception is the two-seat Mazda MX-5 roadster, which manages to stash its hard top and still keep a respectable trunk.
That's not the case with the G37 convertible. When the top is down, there's only about enough space to accommodate a rolled-up beach towel.
It raises the question of why go to all the expensive engineering at a time when fabric technology has reached the point where soft tops likely can last the life of the car.
Larry Dominique, Infiniti's vice president of product planning, says it was simply a matter of demand by customers, who want the tightness and lack of wind noise afforded by a coupe with the availability of top-down motoring.
As to the lack of trunk space with the top down, the answer is that there's the back seat. Simply move your stuff out of the trunk, which has 10 cubic feet of space, and dump it in the back.
The back seat isn't all that useful for people anyway. With the top up, it takes real athletic ability to get back there, and it can only accommodate short adults or children as long as the front seats are moved forward.
The G37's top does have a cool design feature. It flips over and the pieces cuddle up inside each other-almost like those Russian nesting dolls. It keeps the rear deck low and short for a slick profile.
There are two versions. The tested G37 convertible has a seven-speed automatic transmission with a manual-shift mode and a starting price of $44,715. The G37 Sport with a six-speed manual gearbox is 50 bucks more at $44,765.
Both come with a full complement of safety and convenience equipment, including dynamic stability and traction control, antilock brakes, side air bags and door-mounted side-curtain air bags, pop-up rollover bars, power everything and automatic climate control.
The last has a nifty feature that automatically adjusts the temperature to help keep the driver and passengers comfortable in open-air motoring. It directs heated or cooled air in different directions depending on whether the car is moving or stopped, although it helps to be a wimp and ride with the windows rolled up.
Infiniti says the convertible is all new from the front pillars back. It has a stiff body structure that eliminates the dreaded convertible bugaboo of cowl shake and gives the G37 a decent ride and precise handling. The 325-horsepower, 3.7-liter V6 engine has more than enough power with either transmission.
You can order options packages for either version. The premium package includes a so-called "open air" audio system by Bose. It includes speakers in the front-seat headrests that, along with 11 other speakers, produce a surround-sound effect in the cockpit even with the top down.
The package also includes heated and cooled front seats (on the automatic transmission model), Bluetooth communications, memory driver's seat, power tilt-and-telescoping steering wheel, auto-dimming inside mirror and a garage-door opener.
Another package includes a navigation system, 9.3-gigabyte music hard drive, satellite radio, and voice recognition for the climate control, navigation and audio system. With the premium and navigation packages, the test car had a suggested sticker price of $49,815.
Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service. For more columns, go to scrippsnews.com
